California's Santa Rosa Symphony is among the oldest symphony orchestras in the western U.S. The group is noted for its adventurous programming and for its partnerships with local university and high school musicians.

The Santa Rosa Symphony was founded in 1928. Its first concert was played at a local Elks club, but it was immediately successful and soon moved into a 1,000-seat high school auditorium. The orchestra's founder was George Trombley, who remained its conductor until 1958; current chief conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong is only the group's fifth in its history. Trombley established a series of Young People's Concerts in 1947, and youth events remain a staple of the orchestra's programming. Trombley was succeeded in 1958 by Corrick Brown, a pianist-conductor who had first appeared with the orchestra at age 15 as a piano soloist. Under Brown, the Santa Rosa Symphony moved into a new 1,500-seat hall at the Luther Burbank Performing Arts Center. Brown's tenure saw the formation of three new youth groups associated with the orchestra.

Jeffrey Kahane, another pianist-conductor, who went on to a long career as conductor of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, succeeded Brown in 1995 and remained in his post until 2006. In 1995, the orchestra formed a partnership with Sonoma State University to build a new hall on the university's campus; construction on the Green Music Hall began in 2006 and was completed in 2012; with that, the group became the hall's orchestra-in-residence. The orchestra's conductor from 2006 to 2018 was Bruno Ferrandis, who brought the group a first place national award for adventurous programming from ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Ferrandis' successor, named to his post in 2018, was Lecce-Chong. He instituted a virtual concert series during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Lecce-Chong was the conductor on the orchestra's recording debut, an album of music by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich released in 2022 on the Delos label. ~ James Manheim, Rovi